Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (16 page)

He already was scrunched inside his VW Beetle when the thought floated, fully formed, into his brain: Firebomb the KKK marchers, not the jail. Throw the cocktails over the roof, not on the roof. They'd crash in the street, forcing the KKK and their followers to run like hell away from the flames, which would give them, the flame throwers, time to escape through the woods. The Black men housed in the jail would be spared, the sheets would feel the fire, and Charlie et al. would live to fight another day. Eric would, he thought, approve of this plan. So would J.T. and perhaps even William. And, Charlie thought, a few dozen already assembled Molotov cocktails would be convincing.

He climbed out of the Beetle and hurried back through the woods. He didn't think he'd be missed tonight. William and Tamara, who lived at the Black House, probably would rather be in bed than entertaining them. Eric usually preferred the company of his own thoughts. And if J.T. never spent another moment in Tamara's presence, it would be okay. Charlie would do his work tonight, in secret, and then tell them all on Friday night at their final planning meeting. It would be his surprise gift to them.

But it was Charlie who was surprised on Friday night. He'd stopped his car two blocks from the house. He could get no closer because the police had blocked off the street. He backed up, turned around and drove away, thinking frantically about who he could ask about what was going on, because he was certain that whatever it was, the Black House was involved. He drove around for a while, then went home. His mother ran down the walk and grabbed him before he could haul himself out of the tiny car.

“OhGodOhGodOhGod! I thought you were dead, Charlie!” She held him so tight he couldn't breathe.

“I'm not dead, Mama. Why would you think that?”

“'Cause the rest of 'em are dead! That's what they're saying on the TV!”

Charlie broke away from her and ran into the house. He spent the rest of the evening on the floor before the television, not believing what he was hearing: William Rodgers and John Thomas Anderson, Jr., both twenty-one-year-old seniors at the university, found shot to death in an off-campus residence used by Black students to plot against the school and the government; another senior, twenty-three-year old Michael Eric Mason was being held, charged with the murders. It couldn't be true. Charlie didn't believe it.

He learned the following day that it was true. The gun that killed William and J.T. was found in the leather satchel that Eric used to carry his books and papers. His fingerprints were all over it. He also learned that all the Black students enrolled in the university were to be expelled. Immediately. Acting on a tip from a confidential source, the police uncovered a stash of Molotov cocktails buried behind the police department that the dead and jailed Black Power advocates planned to use to disrupt the weekend plans of the KKK.

The march and rally, with more than five hundred in attendance, went off without a hitch. Three Black Power effigies were hung and burned. Participants were given Molotov cocktails to throw at the effigies. Half a dozen of those participants grabbed a handful of Molotov cocktails and ran through the woods to Coontown where they threw them at the first houses they came to. Nine houses belonging to Black residents burned to the ground before the fire department arrived.

Boxer Gordon was one of the fastest two-fingered typists on the planet. That wasn't always the case. Until five or six months ago, his hunt-and-peck method of typing resembled that of every other non-typist: Slow and error-filled. Then Peggy Brown, that miracle of a woman who had brought light and life and joy back into his dark old life, showed him a free typing tutorial on the public library's website. He'd been self-appointed king of the two-fingered typists ever since. She opined his years and skill as a boxer in the army accounted for his fast fingers. He didn't agree, but he didn't argue.

He put the spell checker to work, corrected the errors, pushed the print button, sat back in the chair and put his sock feet up on the desk. Soon he was re-reading the final report to the client when the phone rang. He looked at the desk clock over the tops of his reading glasses. Too early to be Peggy calling. He picked up the phone. “Charles Gordon.”

“Hello, Charlie.”

The soft, slightly mocking voice on the other end of the phone shocked Boxer to his core and, truth be told, frightened him. He swung his feet to the floor and stood, though he didn't know why. He gripped the phone. “Eric? Is that you? Really you?”

“It's really me, Charlie.”

Boxer dropped back into his chair and was glad for the extra pillows in the seat, otherwise he'd have hurt himself, he went down so hard. “My God. Eric. Eric Mason.”

“How are you, Charlie?”

“Where are you, Eric?”

“I'm here, Charlie. I'm back. I'm home.”

Boxer didn't know what else to say. He'd put it all behind him, out of his memory.

“I'd like to see you, Charlie. I know you're a busy man but I'd appreciate a bit of your time. Sooner rather than later.”

“Of course, Eric. I'm not that busy.” He wished he were, then he could have refused.

Eric produced a dry chuckle. Something new, Boxer thought: A chuckle from Eric. Then he thought to himself, the man probably had quite a few new habits. Forty years in prison could produce a shit load of new habits. “I've read about your exploits, Charlie. You've lead a most interesting life. And a productive one, too, I think.”

“I have to deliver a client report in about an hour, Eric, and I'm free after that.”

Eric gave the name of a by-the-hour motel a couple of blocks from the bus station and a tsunami-sized wave of sadness washed over Boxer. He almost offered the man his couch but he didn't want to trust what forty years in prison might have done to Eric. He'd been a cop before he became a PI, and was infantry in Vietnam before that. Life experiences changed a man, and prison was one of life's most horrible experiences—worse, maybe, than war. No telling who Eric Mason was now, but whoever he was, he wanted to see Boxer—no, he wanted to see Charlie—and Charlie would see him. But first he'd see his client, get paid, deposit the check in the bank, stop by the hospital where Peggy was the late shift nursing supervisor this month to tell her where he'd be, and finally pick up some food to take to Eric.

Boxer assumed that forty years worth of prison chow had left Eric without any pretensions where food was concerned, that he'd eat almost anything. He bought two whole roasted chickens and several kinds of vegetables, bread, dessert, six packs of beer and soda, and, as an afterthought, stopped at a discount store and bought plates, utensils, glasses, napkins and a tablecloth. Eric had said he was “home” but Boxer knew the man had no living family in town, and no real reason to come back here. Unless he, Boxer—Charlie—was the only one still alive who knew his past, and Boxer thought he had succeeded in forgetting it.

He was surprised at what he saw when Eric opened the door. He had been expecting the worst but that's not what he got. Eric looked fit and trim and when Boxer put the bags down and hugged him, what he felt was a prison-hardened body, hours a day spent in the weight room. Of course, the Black Power afro was gone. Eric's hair, all white now, was cut close to the scalp, but there was no bald spot on top. The tell was in the eyes. His eyes, once calm, gentle, peaceful, inquisitive, now were wild, crazy eyes. He knew how to keep them under control, knew better than to let Boxer see too much. Knew also, though, that Boxer had seen more than enough.

“Thank you for coming, Charlie, and please, before we start down memory lane, I want to apologize to you. I know you tried to see me in prison, and you wrote to me all those years ago. I appreciated it, but I wanted to keep you as far away from all that as possible.”

“What happened, Eric? I'll understand if you can't or don't want to talk about it. But if you can, I'd really like to know.” Did he? Forty years ago, he hadn't. Not really.

Eric nodded but he was looking at the food. “A feast, Charlie. A veritable feast.” He licked his lips and rubbed his hands together. “I want to tell you. But I'd really like to eat first, if that's all right with you.”

“Of course it is,” Boxer said, and he spread the cloth on the table—it was plastic but its bright pattern immediately improved the ragged ugliness of the cheap room. He set out plates and napkins and opened the packages of utensils and glasses. Then he put all the food containers on the table and told Eric to help himself. “Do you want soda or beer?”

“Both!” Eric exclaimed with child-like exuberance. He approached the business of eating the same way. He didn't talk much while he ate except to thank Boxer several times and to compliment both the food and Boxer's choices. Boxer ate a wing and a leg and Eric ate the rest.

“I'm making a glutton of myself and I apologize. This is such a feast, Charlie, and I thank you. Truly I do.”

Eric sighed deeply and popped open a can of soda. He drank it down. Then he popped open a beer, took a small sip, frowned, put it down and opened another soda. He turned his wild eyes on Boxer and paused for a second before speaking, as if he wanted to be certain that Boxer saw what was there. “It was Tamara,” he said. “She gave me the gun that killed William and J.T. She said I was the one who should have it because I was the most level-headed.”

Boxer looked at him but the wildness was gone from his eyes. Nothing left but the emptiness of forty years in prison. “Are you saying that Tamara killed William and J.T.?”

“I don't know if she killed them or if the cops killed them, but I do know she gave me the gun that killed them on Friday afternoon. She was waiting for me after my last class.” He smiled a typical Eric smile then, the Eric-smile from the old days—a little shy and a little wry. “I didn't wonder until I'd been in jail for a while how she knew where to find me late on Friday afternoon. I also didn't wonder then what she meant when she told me I was brilliant for having the Molotovs already filled and ready to throw.” Eric stopped talking. He smiled that smile again and it was once more the gentle, philosophical Eric. “You did that, didn't you? I always thought it was you who had done it.”

Boxer didn't know what to say. So many times he'd wondered whether that had made a difference, wondered whether, if he'd left things alone, there would have been a different result a different outcome. Now he had his answer. “I thought … I didn't want to burn the jail. I wanted to burn the cowards wearing the sheets, to scare the shit out of them.”

Eric nodded. “I thought a lot about that, too, why we did what we did the way we did it. But much later, in jail, when all I had to do was think and wonder. That Friday afternoon I had no time at all to think. Tamara walked away from me heading toward the front gate, and all the cops in the world came from the other direction, surrounding me. The police chief grabbed my satchel, opened it, pulled out the gun, told me I was under arrest for murder. That's what happened, Charlie. Did Tamara kill them? I don't know. But she did set me up and I had no way to prove my innocence, so I didn't try.”

Boxer remembered. Eric had pled guilty. There was no trial. There were no more Black students at the university for quite a few years—not until he was back from Vietnam and hired as the first Black on the city's police department. The old chief, the sheet-wearer, had died and his replacement had come from the state police and had no knowledge of anybody named Charlie Gordon, William Rodgers, John Thomas Anderson or Eric Mason and a failed Molotov cocktail party. “What happened to her? Tamara?”

“She transferred downstate. She wasn't expelled like you and the other brothers and sisters were. Her record was clean. She was just a transfer from one institution in the state university system to another.” Eric drank his soda down in several large gulps and crushed the can. “She's a professor now, Charlie. Right here. Tenured. Literature, I believe.”

“I didn't know that. Tamara … what was her last name? I didn't have much opportunity in my cop days to run into literature professors.” And wouldn't have wanted to see her anyway.

Now Eric laughed. “It was Knowles, but get this: Her name's not Tamara. That was her cover name. Or I suppose I should say her undercover name. Her real name was Sandra Smith. It's Gullatti now. She's married. Dr. Sandra Gullatti.” He pulled up his sleeve and looked at a watch that might well have been the same Timex he'd worn all those years ago. “She'll be here in about twenty minutes.”

It took a long moment for what Eric said to sink in.

“You lived with the thought for forty years that Tamara's a murderer, is that right?”

“Sandra.”

“Whatever. The point is you think she's a killer.” Boxer held Eric's crazy eyes with his own, not letting him escape, and he finally nodded. Boxer's brain went into overdrive, went into cop-thought: If Tamara/Sandra had killed once, she'd do it again. She hadn't agreed to come down out of her ivory tower to meet somebody she hadn't seen in forty years in a rat trap motel on the seedy side of her university town out of kindness. Eric had set her up to take a fall—and because Boxer was here, he'd fall, too—just like before. Boxer jumped up and began to clear the table of all evidence that a second person was present. Then he scanned the room, looking for a place to hide. There was no place to hide. The closet was barely that, and he wouldn't have gotten on the floor in this place even if he could have fit under the bed. The bathroom. Maybe if he left the door open and stood behind it …

“What are you doing, Charlie?”

“Trying to help you set up Tamara without getting us both killed or locked up.”

Eric grinned and it scared Boxer. As it should have, for the man reached inside his jacket and pulled out a revolver. It was a .38 Special. “I'm ready this time, Charlie!”